So there are reports this week that Amazon, stung by the abject failure of the costly Fire Phone, is back to selling cheap. There is now the low-end $39 Fire TV Stick, yet another TV streaming appliance that’s designed to compete with the Google Chromecast. It’s marketed directly against the Chromecast with the claim of having four times the storage and twice the memory.

To boost initial demand and sales, Amazon Prime members, who pay $99 per year and up for free two-day shipping on many products and free Amazon Prime Instant Video streaming, get a $20 discount. Well, at least through Wednesday. I suppose in the scheme of things spending $19 on a small electronic gadget might be a pretty casual purchase.

Of course, Amazon is not earning any profit on that little gadget. At the $19 discounted price, it’s a loss, but Amazon hopes you’ll decide to move beyond the free video library, and take a look at a larger repertoire of movies and TV content from a number of services, including Netflix. When Amazon factors in their piece of the online action, perhaps there’s some profit to be made.

Now I do not choose to review a product I haven’t used. But this is a market already addressed with the Chromecast and the $49.99 Roku Streaming Stick. For almost $11 more, Roku promises access to over 1,000 channels. But assume for the moment that all three devices offer fairly decent video performance on your HD TV, with decently snappy and fluid user interfaces. How do you choose one or the other?

I suppose if you’re already invested in the Amazon ecosystem, you’d do better with a Fire TV Stick. Faced with mounting losses, that might have been Amazon’s intent, to boost cash flow with minimal losses to move as many Fire TV Sticks as possible. After all, they don’t really cost a whole lot to build.

But when a tech company comes up with something to compete with an existing product, it’s very rarely better in significant ways. Most of the time, a spec or two is better, but overall functionality and usability isn’t altogether different. So the choice from the customer may come down to price, commitment to a specific platform or, most often, the famous “Eeny Meeny” test to make a final choice.

Sure, there’s nothing wrong with just coming out with an imitation of someone else’s tech gadget, and maybe selling it at a lower price. Samsung has managed to do quite well taking that approach, although the copying of the iPhone and the iPad was rather more blatant and Apple didn’t sit still. All right, the lawsuits didn’t stop Samsung from selling anything, and it does seem as if they are cutting back on the tit-for-tat legal filings.

Now notice that the media doesn’t seem to be calling the Fire TV Stick a Chromecast or Roku Streaming Stick killer. It’s just designed to be a rival product. But when it comes to Apple, the speculation is invariably about how an iPhone or an iPad will suffer at the hands of the “killer” of the day.

I suspect few really care of the Fire TV Stick beats a Chromecast in the marketplace, as if that’s a market to be envied.

In another business, you don’t expect the Ford Fusion to “kill” a Chevy Malibu. Both are mid-sized or family cars, priced in a similar range, with similar seating capacity and relatively minor performance and handling differences. Well, I suppose some car magazines will tell you why one or the other is much better in one or more respects, but both products can coexist in the same universe, in dealerships that might be across a driveway from one another. There will be staunch advocates of one brand or the other, but the media won’t be telling you that Chevrolet will go out of business tomorrow because of the existence of a competing auto from Ford or any of a dozen other manufacturers.

In the Apple universe, the company produces a small number of products, usually available in a small number of configurations. True, Macs can be customized, but the real variety is primarily at the higher end, with the Mac Pro. All right, there may be too many iPads available right now, and maybe Apple is stretching things a tad to see how it shakes out.

But the overall approach of simplified product lines affords each a higher stake. So when a competing product arrives, it’s easy to regard it all as a battle to the death. But that’s Apple. Even though Samsung sells more Galaxy handsets than HTC Ones, one doesn’t exactly destroy the other in any meaningful comparison. Certainly a Dell doesn’t kill the competing HP or Lenovo.

In any case, I’m a long-time Amazon customer. If I was in need of a video streaming appliance, I might even consider a Fire TV Stick. But I’m not. Certainly a fair amount of similar gadgets have been sold, although 20 million copies of the Apple TV and 10 million Rokus don’t really indicate a significant trend. This is still a market ripe for innovation. But real innovation is not Amazon’s game plan.

Apple is making a huge deal of one of the key components of OS X Yosemite, Handoff, part of the Continuity integration feature that allows relatively easy interaction with a Mac and iOS device. But many Mac users have been orphaned. Handoff lets you do what the name implies, which is to start a message, or a document in a supported app or open a web site, among other things, and be able to pick up where you left off on another device on the same Wi-Fi network.

If you watched the demonstration at June’s WWDC, as I did, you might wonder why it doesn’t seem to work on your Mac. The reason is that millions of older models are excluded, because, in part, they lack Bluetooth 4.0 LE hardware. Even 2011 Macs with the correct Bluetooth components are not on the list, though perhaps the reasons are more complex. Regardless, it’s not as if Apple made the fine print terribly clear to you unless you read some of the press accounts on the matter, or consulted a support document on Apple’s site.

You might feel betrayed that Handoff, and other OS X Yosemite features, including AirDrop, are missing in action because you haven’t purchased a new Mac in recent years. Is this all a plot on the part of Apple to entice you to buy a new computer?

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So there’s a lurid story this week about some Bank of America customers encountering duplicate charges when using Apple Pay to cover a bill. The critics are yowling. Is Apple’s new digital wallet system fatally flawed? Should customers even bother with such silliness as NFC and Touch ID to replace simple if not-terribly-secure credit card swiping.

Now first and foremost, regardless of the teething problems, there’s nothing here that indicates a potential security problem. It’s just a processing error of some sort. Bank of America says it’s an Apple Pay issue, and Apple promises to fix it. Meantime, it’s reported that only about 1,000 customers were impacted and, of course, they will get refunds for the double charges. Nobody is ripping off anybody here.

But I’m not surprised that goofy things happen when one is trying to do something complicated, and it’s clear Apple Pay is an extremely sophisticated payment scheme. Remember that the retailer doesn’t see your credit card number, and transactions are made with a digital token to ensure security. The transaction is made using your Touch ID. So it’s not a matter of someone being able to steal your money by stealing your iPhone. Besides, if your iPhone is stolen, you can use the Find My iPhone feature to locate its whereabouts and wipe it clean.

Understand that new technologies will have glitches here and there. But it seems that when the glitch involves Apple, it gets much more play in the media. Isn’t Apple supposed to be perfect?

Of course, when you look at the history of Apple, you’ll see there are always problems of one sort or another, starting with power supply failures on the very first 1984 all-in-one Mac. If you look at other tech hardware and software, you’ll find even more severe defects.

Back to the present day, Apple has had to confront glitches — 0r presumed glitches — for over a month now. Just before iOS 8 came out, there was the sensational story about the leak of nude photos from a number of entertainers. Forgetting for the moment the wisdom of putting explicit photos of anyone in the cloud, it wasn’t about iCloud vulnerabilities but being able to easily crack someone’s username and password. With a celebrity, the username is most always obvious, so it means the password must be chosen with due care.

When iOS 8 arrived, there was a spate of bugs, including the inability to pair your iPhone via Bluetooth with some cars. There were also problems with Wi-Fi connectivity with some routers, among other things. The infamous 8.0.1 updater essentially bricked any iPhone 6, and it was pulled quickly. But not before the media went after Apple; the fixed version arrived a day later.

The iOS 8.1 update appears to be pretty solid, however, and the adoption rate of the new mobile OS is hovering around 53% (source: Mixpanel) as I write this. It appears the momentum increased this week, perhaps because the update d version made some skeptical people more inclined to upgrade. So I expect the rate will continue to catch up, but it’s impossible to ever hit the 91% level because less hardware is supported.

There was also that alleged iPhone 6 Plus bending issue that lasted long enough for Consumer Reports magazine to test the hardware and find it perfectly solid. Without a rash of complaints of similar problems — Apple said only nine complaints were received when they responded to the reports — it ended up as just another one of those silly issues that arise with new Apple gear that soon fades away.

OS X Yosemite seems pretty solid so far. Most issues so far are about Apple’s design choices rather than actual bugs, although there are reports of problems with Bluetooth connectivity and a possible performance lag. The translucency effects may seem a bit much, though they are easily dialed back. But you have to use Accessibility preferences to make the changes, which appears to be a curious design choice, although a similar logic was used in providing ways to scale back the excesses in iOS 7 and iOS 8.

It’s also true that some of the highly-promoted features of Yosemite mostly don’t work on Macs older than two or three years. But Apple isn’t going to put the brakes on developing new capabilities because older hardware won’t provide support. People will just learn to live with it or buy new Macs. There has to be a selling point beyond a slight increase in performance.

In saying that, though, I’ve read scattered reports of “unofficial” ways to engage Handoff on these other Macs. Some of them require opening your Mac and replacing the wireless card, and I wouldn’t recommend it unless you know your stuff, and are willing to take a chance installing unapproved hardware with the potential downsides. Maybe that’s enough to make Apple think about an official solution.

The arrival of new iPads was greeted with the complaints, from some, that they weren’t sufficiently changed over last year’s. But people who bought an iPad last year are highly unlikely to buy another t his year, unless it’s to add to the collection. Too bad logic isn’t allowed to prevail over fear-mongering.

Besides I’m still waiting for a pie-shaped or circular iPad.

So let’s look at the early reviews of the iPad Air 2 and the iPad mini 3. They come from that privileged group of journalists who get an early look at brand new Apple gear. In passing, I wouldn’t presume to suggest that Apple favors those who grant positive coverage, since the reviews do have some all-too-typical complaints about whether the refreshes are significant enough.

But they do miss the point.

You see, Tim Cook admitted during this week’s quarterly conference call with financial analysts that Apple doesn’t really have a handle on the iPad upgrade cycle yet. It’s clear it’s less frequent than smartphones, where most of you can renew your wireless contract every two years and buy the latest and greatest gear at a discount price. So even a first generation iPad is perfectly usable, although it cannot be upgraded to iOS 8.

Despite this, Tim Cook spoke of more than 50% of iPad purchases being to people who never bought one before. This is of special importance, because it means that the market is definitely not saturated. But Apple clearly needs more new business to boost flagging sales, so is there a magic bullet, or does it require simply keeping on to keep the product on the front burner?Clearly Apple has no plans on giving up or even cutting back.

Now the most significant product refresh of the current cycle is the iPad Air 2. It’s thinner, with a newer, faster processor, the A8x, an enhanced version of the chip that powers the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, along with Touch ID and a better camera. The benchmarks are outstanding, much better than last year’s iPads, and superior to what competing tablets from other companies offer. One reviewer even suggested that benchmarks are in line with what you’d see on a new Mac in 2011. We’re talking of true desktop class power here, but I am not assuming that Macs will soon move to ARM when performance comes closer to today’s Intel hardware.

The key is that the iPad Air 2 is powerful enough for any task thrown at it, as the critics state. One criticism that I hope Apple can address, though, is multitasking. Certainly a mobile computer with power comparable to a 2011 Mac is certainly capable of presenting two or more apps and/or documents on the same screen. Even the lowly compact Mac from the late 1980s offered such multitasking, though via a more primitive method, with far less CPU horsepower.

Now I suppose it is possible Apple is working on such a multiple app solution, and that it will happen before iOS 9 arrives. There’s little doubt that this year’s and last year’s iPads are quite capable of handling the extra load. The arrival of Office for iPad only heightens the need for improved multitasking. Besides, you can already do this on an Android tablet, and Google’s platform doesn’t offer near the number of productivity apps.

But the reviews mostly focus on whether the new iPads are sufficiently tempting for users of older models to upgrade. The conclusion is that they are wanting. Even though the iPad mini 3 is essentially the same as last year’s model with Touch ID added, it’s still more than good enough to get the job done. But even if Apple installed an A8x chip on the mini, would that make it more attractive for upgraders? Does Apple need to take the kitchen sink approach and throw everything possible inside to earn higher sales?

What the critics seem to forget is that an iPad is a platform to run apps. When your existing iPad cannot run an app with the performance you need, it’s time to upgrade. But not before. For those new to the product, or the iOS platform, it’s also very much about the ease of use and integration of iOS along with the ability to get the apps you want, whether games, messaging, or productivity.

For customers, an iPad is also a learning experience. I expect many are experimenting to see how it fits with their own lifestyles and workflows. Some will go back to a personal computer, and Apple hopes it’s a Mac. Or they might seek a larger smartphone, such as the iPhone 6 Plus. Again, if Apple gets the sale, well and good. It’s also conceivable that, as features and apps are added to iPad, it may become a more suitable note-book replacement.

But I’ll make no guesses about the potential for an iPad Pro, and I remain fully skeptical that Apple would ever do a convertible note-book with a touchscreen. The potential for such a gadget remains unproven.

Apple is also making the big push into education, where it reportedly holds a 90% share of tablet penetration, and the enterprise. The new deal with IBM, just starting to come to fruition, could represent a huge boost for iPad sales. Remember that when employees are exposed to iPads at work, perhaps they’ll consider buying one or two for the home.

It’s early in the game, and the iPad’s potential probably hasn’t been realized yet. At the same time, when reviewers suggest that a new model isn’t new enough, they continue to miss the point. Maybe they’d prefer if Apple built a curved iPad.